"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”-William Blake, the mystic
“The past and future are immanent in an object, existing as different sectors in the same flow of experiential forms.”- Patanjali, the yogi
"Thufferin' Thuccotash!"- Sylvester, the cartoon character
Meet Hornek Platter.
Genius.
Autodidact.
Recluse.
Hornek was only five years old when he first introduced his embryonic theory of time travel to a public audience. It was in Mrs. Mayko’s “show + tell” class. The class didn’t know how to take it. The gist and profound nature of it all just sailed over their daydreaming heads. When Betty McNetty pulled out her dollhouse, all the girls got uber-excited and dumped tons of adulations on her and the plastic house. When Bryan Gluts displayed his collection of superman toys, all the boys started doing the same. At the end of the class, everyone had forgotten about Hornek’s advanced theory. In their minds, it was almost as if Hornek never even spoke that day. The memory of his show and tell presentation had been tossed to the wayside by more digestible memories involving plastic houses, dolls, and superheroes.
When he was sixteen years old, Hornek was about to make a similar presentation for his physics class. He had everything prepared to his liking. He surmised he had all the quirks, kinks, and paradoxes of exotic hyperspace travel figured out. He had all his diagrams ready. His entire being was ready. But then he came down with a stifling case of laryngitis just days before he was going to shock and awe his contemporaries. He couldn’t speak for weeks. As a result, he missed out on his opportunity.
At the age of twenty-one, Hornek decided to stop worrying about presenting his advanced ideas to the public. The public was never meant to understand the depth and breadth of his knowledge. During this epoch of his life, he stayed in his mother’s basement a lot and sauntered in the conceptual terrain that enthralled history’s scientific and philosophical titans, giants, and kings. He read everything he could get his hands on about astrology, astronomy, metaphysics, theology, classical and quantum physics, and even science fiction. Every moment was dedicated to the ascetic acquisition of knowledge. Every fiber of his being was dedicated to the task at hand. From about 7am every morning to 7pm every evening, he read, and read, and read. He read until the brain-waves throbbed, convulsed, and cried out, “We’re stuffed!” Nothing else mattered. Even when he slept in a bed flanked by countless books, he dreamt of mathematical formulae trickling down the tree of knowledge like long strands of imperishable sap, the elliptical orbits of planets, the animals of the zodiac, puzzling principles, immutable and mutable laws, causality and acausality, the faces of dead geniuses, the mean radius of the world in relationship to the mean radius of the moon, and the treatises of the enlightened. Knowledge consumed him. Knowledge had become him. At the relatively tender age of twenty-four, he had cerebrally digested thousands of books on various contentious and intriguing topics.
At the age of twenty-eight, a revelation dawned upon Hornek’s knowledge-saturated mind as he sat beneath an oak tree in his backyard. After noticing an inconspicuous beehive and a random bird’s nest in his backyard, he said to himself:
“If the hive can hide the precious honeycomb, and the nest can hide a bird’s eggs, then surely space can hide dimensions within itself.”
The revelation unpacked itself in his mind over the course of months. He thought about space in new ways. Space became the focal point of his life. He saw space as a type of dynamic medium filled with hidden geometries and dimensions. The old, out-dated theory regarding the homogeneity of space didn’t hold any sway in Hornek anymore. Space, he humbly ascertained, was made of layers that were enfolded within layers that were enfolded within more layers, ad infinitum.
On December 6th, 2009, Hornek Platter wrote this down in this journal. The entry dealt with our inability to see these layers in our daily lives:
“The reason we can’t see these multivalent layers is due to the divergence of the senses and the motion of the disturbed mind. When the senses aren’t working together in a highly organized fashion (ie: when the senses aren’t focused on “one abiding thing”), they have a tendency to impart to the mind an interference pattern of grandiose ugliness. This inference pattern causes the mind to vibrate divisively. This less than optimal vibrating then creates a state of mental chaos. This mental chaos then reigns supreme in the mind, and this mind then distorts the holistic picture of the world. If the senses were to focus on one thing and impart to the mind a harmonious vibratory pattern of naked existence, the mind would then be able to see through the outer shell of space. The mind would be able to see beyond the veil of illusion.”
On December 12th, 2009, a neighborhood child involved in Scouts Canada, came to Hornek’s door selling chocolate-covered almonds. He rang once and knocked on the door three times. No answer. He rang once more. Just before he was about to walk away, Hornek answered the door wearing his morning garb: some black shorts and an anonymous colored shirt with a pocket. He wore no socks. Hornek amicably greeted the boy and asked him what he was selling. “I am doing a fundraiser for Scouts Canada,” proudly answered the boy. “If I can sell lots of chocolate-covered almonds, my friends and I will be able to go on canoe trips next summer. Would you like some?” Hornek agreed to buy some. “Yeah. Please hold on a minute while I get some change.”
Hornek entered the kitchen and opened a drawer where his mother kept loose change, phone numbers, recipes, and all the other knickknacks hidden from plain sight. He sifted through the papers until he reached a little change container. He pulled out $3.00. Just as he pulled his hand out of the drawer, a little piece of paper gently fell down onto the recently polished hardwood floor. When Hornek bent down to investigate the queer piece of paper, he noticed the following sentence hastily imprinted upon it:
“DON”T TRUST THE BOY!”
Hornek thought nothing of it. He went back to the door, gave the patient child the $3.00, thanked him for the highly palatable box of chocolate-covered almonds, and then closed the door. The rest of Hornek’s day was dedicated to savoring the confectionary delight, the ascetic acquisition of knowledge, and a movie about zombies and physics (a movie no doubt constructed around an inane idea).
On the 14th of December, the boy came back to Hornek’s door with a tupperware container filled with chicken noodle soup. When the exhausted Hornek answered the door, the friendly neighborhood boy said, “Here, take this soup. My mom made it for you. You were the only one on this street who helped me out with my cause. My mom and I would like to thank you with this delicious soup.” Hornek looked at the frozen tupperware container and then looked at the resplendent boy standing before him. “I appreciate this kind gesture,” said Hornek. “I will eat this tonight.” Hornek then gently shut the door and went straight to the freezer. As he placed the tupperware container in the freezer, he noticed another queer piece of paper pasted to a box of frozen pasta shells. The piece of paper said:
“THE GIFT IS TAINTED WITH DECEPTION. THE BOY WANTS THE GLASSES.”
Puzzlingly, Hornek perused the queer piece of paper and the strange words on it. He didn’t understand where the words could have come from. It was just his mother and himself, and an apathetic cat who could only speak to Hornek in rudimentary meows and mewls. There was no one else. Hornek thought about the possibility of being a victim of an elaborate joke. But who would orchestrate such a joke and why? Who would warn Hornek about a boy who seemed as innocuous and amiable as the Dalai Lama?
Befuddled by it all, Hornek left the kitchen, ensconced himself on a living room couch, and went to sleep thinking about the role of the irrational in his life. He dreamt of being an explorer who was sailing in a viscous sea of chicken noodle soup. Paper was falling from the gloomy sky of narration onto a ship made from thought-wood. The boy was watching the horizon from the prow. He was talking to no one in particular. He was saying:
“Space within space within space within space within space within space within space within.”
The repetitious words eventually became a song. The song eventually became the sound of a distant bell. The distant bell eventually became the sound of his mother’s voice talking to the apathetic cat. She was upset. The cat had puked all over the rug. Hornek then realized he had awoken from the shit storm of protean symbols he called his dreaming mind. The endless and viscous chicken sea had vanished. The boy had too.
On December 16th, as a blizzard besieged his town, as the glacial drift of time moved against the landmasses in his mind, Hornek Platter thought about inventing something spectacular. A summer-time thought crept into the cerebral attic and started stirring up the neural dust:
“If the hive can hide the precious honeycomb, and the nest can hide a bird’s eggs, then surely space can hide dimensions within itself.”
He quickly pulled out his journal and jotted down some embryonic ideas regarding hidden space and, more importantly, the perception and apprehension of its occult nature:
“There needs to be a device that locates the non-local. There needs to be a device that perceives the imperceptible. The hidden dimensions of space must come to light with the help of some type of extrasensory visual apparatus. Imagine 3-D binocular glasses turned into 4-D glasses. 3-D glasses give us the illusion of depth. 4-D glasses would impart to us a panoramic view of the space/time continuum. The continuum would be perceived as a meta-process of collective ingenuity, where the words of the thinker have as much bearing on reality as the acts of the doer. Thinking and doing would be indistinguishable with the help of 4-D glasses. Time and space, fiction and non-fiction would be indistinguishable as well. I know this sounds unnerving and frightening, but it needs to be done. The prototype for the revolutionary glasses needs to be made. It needs to be done now.”
Hornek Platter then heard a knock at the door upstairs. Who could it have been? There was a tempestuous blizzard raging on out there. Who would have even dared to step outside for even a nanosecond? Only a fool would have ventured out to face the powerful and virile nature of Rudra The Howler. Intuition told him it was the boy. Intuition also tried to convince him not to open the door.
Sometimes messages are prophetic. Sometimes they are absurd. Hornek, at his current stage of development, couldn’t tell the difference. Most of us can’t.
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